Mine to Crave

Her expression softened.

“Other than Noah and Trace, no one else knows about this cabin. We’ll be safe here until I can make contact with Trace again.” He knew that Noah and Trace would be able to handle the cops. Trace had connections all over the place. “Let’s get inside.”

She glanced toward his now dirt-covered Porsche. “You surprise me.”

He paused on the first wooden step. Sure, the cabin might not be much to look at, but he felt at home there. Always had. He came out there at least four or five times a year, when the city was about to choke the life out of him, and he remembered who he’d been a lifetime ago.

A boy who fished on the dock. A boy who jumped into the water and laughed at the freedom. A boy who looked up at stars and dreamed.

Not just a man with too many nightmares.

“I…didn’t see this for you,” Jasmine said as her hand waved toward the cabin. “It doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Then maybe you should’ve checked more into my past, and not just my present.”

She gave a jerky little nod at that as she came closer to him. “My past is so screwed up. I have a rule that I try not to poke too far into anyone else’s—”

He caught her hand in his. “Because you don’t want them knowing about yours?”

“Yes.” So soft.

“I want to know everything.”

She smiled, but her dimples didn’t flash. “Isn’t that what Trace is for? So he can give you a file on me?”

“I want you to tell me.”

He waited a beat.

“You will tell me.”

One way…or another.

***

Saxon braked his motorcycle a good distance from the old cabin. The Porsche waited, covered in dirt and dust, about fifteen feet from the place. Drake’s car. He’d recognized it on sight.

So he’d followed them. Carefully.

His eyes slid over the cabin. Drake and Jazz were in there.

This was the perfect opportunity. Just what his boss had been waiting for.

Now, if he could just get the go-ahead to act.

Saxon pulled out his phone. “Guess who I’ve got in my sights…”

Chapter Eleven

“So I’m supposed to reveal all my secrets to you?” Jasmine asked as she rubbed her arms. There was no reason for her chill, but she still felt it. “Is that the way this works?”

He was seated at a small, wooden table. His legs were stretched in front of him.

“I tell you mine,” she heard herself say, “and I’ll want to know yours.” She thought those words might scare him. She should have known better.

His head inclined and her heartbeat raced.

“You first,” Jasmine blurted because she was a coward at heart. Had he realized it? Sure, maybe she could walk on a three inch ledge to a balcony ten feet away, but sharing anything personal?

Terrifying.

“What do you want to know?”

She sucked in a deep breath. “The woman…Anna Jean…did you love her?”

“No.”

Such a flat response.

“I wanted her, I cared for her, but…I never loved her. I don’t think I’ve loved any woman.”

Jasmine cleared her throat.

“Have you slept with them?” Drake demanded.

“Them?”

“Victor Monroe. The too familiar agent.”

Jasmine shook her head.

“And Maxwell?”

“No. He was an assignment, nothing more.”

His eyes narrowed and she realized that she’d slipped up. Jasmine hurried toward him. “Why casinos? You were in the military, and going into the casino business seems like a serious one-eighty to me.”

“Life’s a gamble.” He shrugged. “You realize that when you spend your days and nights dodging bullets. When you cheat death over and over again, you realize you’ve hit a lucky streak.”

Hell, his whole life was a gamble. Now it made sense to her.

“Then your luck runs out.”

She stopped near his side and stared down at him. “Is that what happened to you?”

A faint smile tilted the corners of his mouth. “My turn now.”

Oh, right.

“Why did you run away at fifteen?”

Talk about getting right to her darkest, most carefully guarded secret. “I don’t like this game anymore.”

He caught her hand. Held it in his. “It was never a game.”

His touch scorched her.

“Tell me.”

She stared at their entwined hands. She didn’t want to look in his eyes when she revealed her shame. “My mother…I realized what she was when I was nine years old. Before that, I just…I thought she had a lot of boyfriends. That was what she called them, you see. Her boyfriends.”

Mommy’s going out with her boyfriend tonight. You just stay inside and keep the lights turned off. I’ll be back soon.

“She liked drugs and she liked to drink and she needed money…so she got it the only way she could.” Had her mother been different once? Maybe before Jasmine had been born? Long ago, she must have been different.

Drake’s hold tightened on her.

“When I was fifteen, she tried to give me to one of her boyfriends.”

His hold became painful.

“She said she was tired and that he liked me, and it would just make things easier if I…if I…” No, Jasmine would not say it. “I left, and I never looked back.” Her breath whispered out. “Maybe ease that grip a bit?”

“Sorry.” He immediately lightened his hold. Then he brought her hand up to his lips. Kissed her wrist. Her palm.

Jasmine could only stare at him. “That wasn’t how you were supposed to react.”

He looked up at her.

“I’m the daughter of a drugged out prostitute. She overdosed a week after I left her. She died and they found her naked and alone in that trailer park.” She shoved back the pain. “You’re not supposed to react this way. You’re not supposed to just sit there and stare up at me and—”

He kissed her hand again. “The first time we talked, I realized how strong you were. I thought you might just be the strongest woman I’d ever met.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t strong. She was weak. A—

“You should see what I see,” he told her, tilting back his head. “When I look at you.”

“A liar and a thief.” She already knew what he saw.

“No.” He pulled her down, and Jasmine sprawled over his lap. “I see a beautiful, smart, strong woman who needs to believe in herself. Life’s been hard, damn brutal to you, but you’ve survived.”

He was making her heart hurt. “Like life hasn’t been brutal to you?”

“We all have our scars.” His thumb moved lightly along the inner column of her wrist. Jasmine knew he had to feel her racing pulse.

Yes, they did have their scars. “When I was a little girl, I wanted another life. Any other life but the one I had. I would dream of starting some place new. A new name. A new past.” She swallowed. “A new future.”

“Is that why you’re still running? Because you want that new life?”

Her lashes lowered. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter how long or hard you run, there’s no escaping the past.”

“Don’t I know it? You can’t even bury that shit sometimes.”

Her gaze jerked back up to his. “Is that what you want to do? Bury your past? Forget about Anna Jean?”

“Her blood will always be on my hands.” His voice roughened. “I hate what I did. I hate that I got drunk and screwed my friend’s girl. Tucker and I…we were close and that destroyed him. Tucker mattered to me. Tucker, Noah, and Trace—they were my family after my mother and grandfather died. And I wound up hurting them all because I couldn’t keep my pants zipped.”

“Drake…”

“She was the only woman who ever got close to me. She looked at me and lied, and I didn’t even realize it.” He paused. Studied her with a hard gaze. “I know when you lie, but the problem is…I don’t seem to care.”

She needed to pull away. Instead, she leaned in closer.

Their lips were almost touching.

“Why do you stare at Noah York and look as if you’re losing your whole world?”

His question sank into her, nearly piercing her heart. Too late, she did try to pull away, but there was no place to go.

“I won’t betray my friends. Not ever again,” he vowed. “There’s something there, between you and Noah. He doesn’t remember you—”

“Why should he? We never met.” He was the lucky one.

“What is he to you?”

She didn’t want to answer him.

“Jasmine…”

“Promise not to tell.” Her whisper. Like a child’s voice.

Surprise rippled across his face.

“He doesn’t need to know, so promise me. Promise that you won’t tell. When all of this is over…” And it would be, one day. One day soon. “Don’t tell him.”

He gave a curt nod.

“I think he’s my brother.” Such a quiet confession. One that made Drake’s muscles tense beneath her. “I know he is.”

“What?”

“My mother…she had a little boy before me. She gave him up at birth. She was just sixteen then.” The words tumbled out in a rush now. “She gave him up, gave him to a family who couldn’t have kids of their own.”

“You don’t—”

“She regretted giving him away. She told me that, she’d scream that at me when she drank. So when she got pregnant again, she…she kept me.” And I’d wished, so many times, that she hadn’t.

Just as Jasmine had wished, so many times, that her brother would come back for her.

A girl, dreaming of a rescue that never came.

“Why do you think Noah is your brother?” No emotion was in his voice.

“Because she had one photo of the family who took him. I found it when I was six and…when I was fifteen, it was the only thing I took with me when I left her.” Because she’d thought—stupidly then—that she’d find her brother. That he’d take her in.

And she had found him. But Noah York had been fighting in battles overseas then, and she…she’d found her own wars.

“You’re certain?”

She stared into the warmth of his eyes. “Tracking him wasn’t hard. I had a photograph of his parents. Of him. And when I got access to the right computer equipment…photo imaging software, hospital databases…it all fell into place for me.” Her lips tightened. “He even has her eyes.”

“Shit.”

Just like that, Jasmine found herself off his lap and back on her feet. And Drake had paced across the room, putting a good ten feet between them.

“Drake?”

He glanced at her. Jasmine’s hands were curled around her stomach and his—his were fisted at his sides. “His sister?”

She nodded.

“Noah’s fucking sister?” Then he squeezed his eyes shut. “What have I done?” Then softer, “Again.”

“You haven’t done anything.” Nervously, she edged toward him. The floor creaked beneath her feet.

He threw up a hand, halting her. “Do not touch me right now.”

She was so lost.

“When you touch me, I want to strip you. I want to take you. I want to make you scream my name.”

Oh, well, in that case…Jasmine took another step.

“You’re his sister!” He backed away from her. “All Noah has ever wanted was to find out about his real family. He used to talk about them for hours out in the field…”

“He was better off not knowing.” No… “He is better off not knowing.” Noah had a wife, a home. He didn’t need the mess of the past.

He stared at her with both rage and pain in his eyes. “You’re what he’s wanted. You were right in front of him, and he didn’t even know it.”

This wasn’t good. “You can’t tell him.”

“Bullshit. I have to tell him.”

“No!” Then she leapt across the room and grabbed tightly to his arms. “You really want to tell him that his mom was a drugged out prostitute? That she couldn’t remember his father’s name? That his sister…” The breath she expelled burned her lungs. “Trace will tell you that I have a criminal history. I’ve been hacking for years. I’ve got enemies…so many. You don’t want to put this at his doorstep. You don’t want to put me there.”

“Noah can handle enemies.”

“I don’t want him to know. Please, Drake. There’s no point in it.”

“He’ll want you in his life.”

“But I can’t be a part of his life.” That ripped her up. She’d realize that truth, though, long ago. “So let it go.” Her hands slid up his chest. Curled around his shoulders.

He was so stiff in her embrace. “I fucked you.”

Did the man have some moral opposition to “making love”? Because she didn’t.

“Noah’s sister.” His eyes closed. “Knew you were trouble. From the first glance.”

“I knew you were, too.” And she hadn’t cared. She rose onto her toes. Pressed her lips to his.

He immediately jerked away.

“Drake?”

His eyes were open. Blazing. “I won’t betray a friend again.”